Funerary Inscription for Aelia Sabina CIL 6.10969

Funerary altar, marble, Rome, 117-138 CE

This small funerary altar, found in Rome, was set up for a three-year-old girl, Aelia Sabina, by her parents during the Hadrianic era (117-38 CE). Her father, Publius Aelius Trophimus, was a freedman of the
emperor Hadrian. He is named in an inscription
on an altar in Ostia illustrating
scenes from Rome's foundation, dedicated to the god
Mars by Publius Aelius Syneros, a freedman of Trophimus, whom he identifies as Augusti libertus and Procurator of Crete. Trophimus is one of a
very small number of freedmen known to have held the important administrative post of procurator provinciae. Aelia's mother, Longinia Sabina, was probably also a
freedwoman, but the proud declaration of filiation in the dedication (P[ubli] F[iliae]) clearly indicates that Aelia herself was born free. The
tombstone is conventional in design, precut with a relief of a ritual pitcher (urceus) on the
left side and a
patera (shallow bowl
for pouring libations) on the
right side. Aelia's parents, however, did not treat this
altar in a conventional manner (such as this funerary altar
for Tiberius Claudius Corinthus, set up by his wife Valeria Donata in
the second century CE). Instead, they chose to inscribe an elaborate eleven-line poem in dactylic hexameter
after the opening dedication. Since the small altar could not accommodate the lengthy inscription, the poetic lines were disregarded (the Latin transcription below restores them)
and the poem ran over onto one side of the altar (see images below). The incongruity between the stone and its inscription is matched
by the contrast between the poem's high-flown poetic diction and mythological allusions and the tiny occupant of the tomb. This monument erected by Trophimus
and Longinia Sabina uses poetry to convey the depth of their grief at the loss of their daughter in the same way that another second-century CE sarcophagus
for a child uses visual imagery.